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A new frontier for Reneal [2019-06-01]

This last week has brought an exciting new development for Reneal.  We have received a generous donation of Apple MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops for deployment in Tanzania!  Neal and I have been googling, experimenting, tweaking, and testing to figure out the best options for their use.  There is still a lot of work to do, but this donation is opening up new opportunities and approaches for Reneal.

Since the very beginning of our work, we have used a thin client approach based upon Linux.  All programs, educational content, and files are stored on the server, and most of the programs run on the server as well.  This has allowed us to use older, less capable units to server the students.  These client computers do not even need a hard disk. 

Theoretically any computer with an Intel processor is usable as a thin client.  However to date we have only used computers from Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. that are typically run with Windows.  This is the very first time we have done a deep evaluation of Apple hardware.  These units do have an Intel processor but do not readily lend themselves to network boot (a prerequisite for our usual thin client hardware).  Thus it was with some degree of trepidation that we tackled the first unit.  Initial experiments were unsuccessful, but after more googling and a same-day delivery of an Apple “thunderbolt-to-LAN” cable we saw the familiar blue “Welcome” screen with Tux the penguin.  YES! 

The downside of the MacBook as a thin client is that each thunderbolt-to-LAN cable costs $30.  Plus, this cable is something that would almost certainly be attractive to students to play with (or worse).  But in the midst of experimenting, Neal realized that we could employ an alternative approach that he’d actually tried first back in 2008 – “standalone” computers that are connected to the server solely for file storage and access to educational content.  The entire Linux operating system and the programs are all put on the standalone computer’s hard disk.  The role of the server is now much simpler.  With these standalone laptops, wifi (instead of a wired connection) could be used for communication with the server.  The downside?  Laptops would now require a working hard disk, and each hard disk would need to be loaded with the OS and programs.  However the performance theoretically could be MUCH improved since everything would be running locally on a pretty powerful laptop instead of running on a server shared with all other clients.  Plus there would be no need for network wiring.  We still need to work the security issue (these units are very attractive), but standalone systems could also be easily gathered up each day and stored in a locked cabinet.

There is still a lot of evaluation and software development to be done, but right now we are leaning toward deploying the Apple units as standalone systems.  Given that we are less than three months from departure to Tanzania, the current thought is that we will equip 1-2 small new labs with a pilot standalone system in 2019.  Then we will plan to return to Tanzania in early 2020 to deploy the rest of the MacBooks.

If it sounds like plans are scrambled at the moment, that would be a correct assessment.  But I would say that it is, to say the least, a very happy scramble which will allow us to serve several more schools in Arusha District with high quality labs.

 [Photo: New MacBooks ready for testing]